Maryam Namazie speaking at a meeting of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
Photograph: Anna Gordon for the Guardian

On Saturday reports emerged that Warwick University student union had blocked an event organised by its Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society. The guest of honour was Maryam Namazie, who campaigns against religious ideology, with a particular focus on Islam. A student union official wrote to the society, saying, “There are a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus.”

The response was immediate and empassioned. A petition calling for the decision to be reversed was set up: 5,000 people signed it. The National Secular Society described it as “part of a worrying wave of censorship that we’re seeing across British universities under the guise of ‘safe spaces’”. The writer Kenan Malik called it “the latest act of student union free speech idiocy”. Richard Dawkins tweeted: “She’s a hero to all a university stands for. But cowardly useful idiots of Warwick have banned @MaryamNamazie.”

On Sunday night the union released a statement reversing the decision, which it stated had gone against normal procedures. The union president labelled it an “egregious and highly regrettable error”. Dawkins welcomed the “gracious apology” but added: “Will student unions now learn to stop kowtowing to Islamists?”

That’s really all we’re talking about: a student body’s messy weighing up of which values it wants to endorse

Even if it didn’t evolve into a full-blown Twitter storm, this incident was a classic of the genre. Righteous indignation was tweeted and retweeted, celebrities piled on the pressure, pundits sharpened their quills. Even better, the issue straddled a major faultline in progressive thinking. Advocates of free expression were being pitted against those who feel that criticism of religion, Islam especially, can be antisocial, even dangerous.

For Namazie’s supporters two things were very clear: first, this was a direct attack on free speech; second, lefties were once again siding with religious conservatives because of a misguided belief that Muslims, as a minority group, should be protected at any cost.

The latter is a familiar accusation. I’m suspicious of it because my own willingness to defend Muslims and Islam from certain kinds of attack isn’t motivated by the idea that they and their faith should be beyond criticism. It isn’t about family loyalty either. (My 90-something uncle, whom I’ve met three times, was a religious nationalist politician in Iran, but I was brought up in a secular household.)

Richard Dawkins described the ban as the work of ‘cowardly useful idiots’. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer

First – was the move to block Namazie’s appearance really an attack on free speech? She should certainly be at liberty to express herself within the law. The Guardian has in the past published her work. But does the withdrawal of an invitation really amount to censorship? Her words have not been banned, the state has not gagged her. Is Namazie’s capacity to share her ideas diminished if she doesn’t appear in front of 50-odd students? After all, she can still tweet and blog, as she showed over the weekend. If anything, the whole episode has increased her audience.

Now, it would be silly to argue that those who tried to block her appearance were somehow doing her a favour. Of course they weren’t. But neither is it clear that this is a question of attempted censorship. In a free society we are, on the one hand, at liberty to publish and promote ideas so far as they do not advocate harm. We are also free to shun them if we want to. The Warwick episode is a case in point. All we’re really seeing is one student body’s messy weighing up of which values it wants to endorse, and which it wants to reject.

That leads us to a second point: what motivated those who didn’t want the event to go ahead? Were they really “kowtowing to Islamists”? Namazie is often described as a secularist, championing enlightenment values and defending the rights of women against conservative religious ideology. These are positions that most progressives would find it easy to get behind. But the way Namazie articulates her arguments might give them pause.

At the World Atheist Convention in Dublin in 2011, she set out her stall as an equal-opportunity critic of religious belief. “In my opinion, all religion is bad for you. Religion should come with a health warning, like cigarettes: religion kills.”

However, she does regard Islam as a special case. She believes it is defined by the concept of “inquisition”. She contrasts it with Christianity, arguing that “a religion that has been reined in by the Enlightenment is very different from one that is spearheading an inquisition.” This would seem to hold out some hope for the “Reformation” of Islam. (Personally I feel that the analogy with 16th-century Europe is flawed. It misrepresents the nature of hierarchy in Islam, as well as being anachronistic.) And yet at the same time, Namazie denies the possibility of change and evolution.

She says that “under an inquisition things like ‘Islamic feminism’, ‘liberal interpretations of Islam’ – these are all in quotes for me – ‘Islamic reformism’ … are impossible. A personal religion is impossible under an inquisition.”

So, at a stroke, she denies the agency of all would-be Muslim reformers, Muslim feminists in particular. She undermines those imams and scholars who do preach a liberal, open version of Islam. She appears to think that Muslims with non-judgmental views about sex and sexuality are kidding themselves. In fact, she speaks as though she would actually like to shut down debate in these areas. At one point she quotes the Iranian political activist Mansoor Hekmat: “This is the religion of death.”

What might lead people to decide they’d rather not give a platform to such rhetoric? Recognising the pressure British Muslims are under – surveilled by the state, victims of verbal abuse, vandalism and arson – could it be that some students felt welcoming a person who believes Islam is incompatible with modern life would be wrong?

Why Islam doesn’t need a reformation | Mehdi Hasan

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They could, of course, have engaged her in debate. Why demand instead that the talk be cancelled? The reason given was that she might incite hatred on campus. I think this is over the top – her words probably wouldn’t have resonated very far beyond the meeting room itself (they might now). But the underlying sentiment is reasonable: we don’t want to have any part in the further stigmatisation of Islam.

I cannot see how this equates to defending fascism, undermining liberal values, trading free speech for political correctness, or any of the other charges levelled.

Those on the left who question the constant disparagement of Islam are also accused of applying double standards. They wouldn’t themselves want to live under sharia law. They’d be the first to pull someone up for misogyny if he were Catholic or atheist or Mormon.

Whilst it’s true that many Muslims are socially conservative, not all of them are. In any case, defending someone from prejudice does not entail endorsing their every belief. Neither does it preclude opposing those at the extremist fringes. However, the fact remains: at this historical moment, in this country, Muslims are subject to greater demonisation than almost anyone else. Absolutists may not like it, but this power imbalance must enter into the calculation.

We are lucky to live in a pluralist democracy, with freedom of choice in politics and religion. These are things we should cherish, but they are not in any serious danger. Were they really threatened – by the emergence of a theocracy, by the drafting of racist or misogynist laws – the left would oppose that with every sinew. I hope that more citizens in Muslim-majority countries can one day enjoy the level of political and social freedom that we do, and I support the men and women who try to bring that about.

But it’s time to skewer the idea that, in looking out for British Muslims, the left is abandoning its traditional values. In fact it’s doing what it’s always tried to do – extending a hand to the most beleaguered among us, identifying those society says it’s OK to injure and insult, and saying: this isn’t fair.